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Monday, September 17, 2012

Proud moments in parenting

You know how when you have a repeatedly negative situation, and you act and react the same way every time, you barely need a trigger to become irrationally enraged the next time the situation occurs?

That Vizzini, he can fuss.

I don't know how you are with parallel parking, and with helping other people park. It's not my strength.

By not my strength I mean I generally suck at it. I learned to parallel park with some ability on an episode of Car Talk. Hand to God, they helped me immensely.

Prior to that, I would just take a million guesses. People would regularly stop to help me. There were a couple instances where guys even offered to do it for me.

And yes, I let them.

So whenever Nick, love of my life, light of my days, asks me to help him parallel park, I know things are going to go straight to hell. Typically, we communicate extremely well. But not with directions. It's like we don't speak the same language. Seriously. We've had enough dreadful experiences that my stomach clenches when we pull up to a space that looks like it might be tight.

I know I've said before that he and I are quick to anger, and it is true. It takes about 1.5 seconds for him to get all ragey. Which, of course, flies all over me.

And when he is parking, and I'm directing him, I am always DOING IT WRONG. GODDAMMIT, LISA.

Seriously.

Because I am always standing in the wrong place. Or my arms are too high or too low and he can't see them. HOW IN THE WORLD WOULD HE BE ABLE TO SEE THEM FROM THERE? Or what the fuck kind of motion is that? What does that twirl of the hand even mean?

Which makes me all, I so fucking should have stabbed him in his sleep back when I had the PPD. I surely would've gotten off with temporary insanity. Especially if the judge were a woman who had given birth.

Anyway.

So when you have this kind of situation and you layer it on top of getting very little sleep because you have a wee newborn, and then you put a family of four into a car and try to park near Dupont Circle on a weekend afternoon because you have gently semi-shoved your husband into going to see your acupuncturist for his back, well, let me sum up.

After circling and circling, we saw a semi-convenient space. Nick pulled up and was all, "I'm not sure about this."

So I, knowing I should offer to help, asked, "Would you like me to get out and help?" While silently thinking: saynosaynosaynosayno!

My spouse, he said yes.

So I got out, and invariably had my arms too high. Or too low. I can't remember. All I know is, they were in the wrong place to be visible to him. Any imbecile would know that.

He said something I couldn't hear, being on the other side of the car and all, and behind it. Then he leaned out the window to yell, "I CAN'T SEE YOUR ARMS. PUT YOUR ARMS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM."

"I'M TRYING!!!" This statement contained as much venom as the two king cobras my brother bought from the snake-man on the corner near our house in Delhi that one time. He brought them home in a bag and put them in his bathtub because he didn't have a tank. But that's a whole nother story.

Anyway, I must've launched into a diatribe, because Nick got out and shouted, "SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

Now, when Nick is angry, he is scary. He can get down in your face and it's like a mountain ready to avalanche all over you. I have seen him do this a couple times.

Naturally, faced with this, I responded, "NO, YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

"WE'RE GOING HOME! I'M NOT GOING TO THE ACUPUNCTURIST! "

"YOU SO FUCKING ARE! AND IF YOU AREN'T, I AM. GOOD LUCK FEEDING YOUR DAUGHTER."

The vitriol, it was palpable. If it were physically possible to be angry enough to burst into flames, we both would have.

And then Nick got out of the car, walked over to me, said, "I'm sorry." And gave me a kiss.

I said, "Yeah, I'm sorry too."

And then we got everyone out of the car and walked to Dupont all fine and good.

And because we both get so angry and then so not angry so fast, this immediately left both of our minds. Weeks later, Nick got mad at Jordan, and yelled at him to stop doing something.

I totally get the parking problem thing because we have that too. And also, after we moved to England and the English husband, who happily let me drive him around the States for years, decided to teach me to drive all English-like. At that point car-related things started to get very, very ragey between us. So in the past 6 months, I haven't once been the driver in a car that contained him. We're both much better off this way.